As the author of The Shelter of Each Other, I remember looking at the photo of my grandmother, one that sits on the corner of my writing desk. That photograph and old family stories that I heard as a child prompted me to wonder how life was for her. She died when I was four years old, thus I have fading memories of stories told mostly by my mother. I’m now in my eighties and when I began writing this novel I wanted somehow to honor the parts of her that lie within me. My grandmother is not the heroine in my story; however, she represents an idea for me, of how women’s generational stories can be inextricably linked.
An important character in The Shelter of Each Other is Sophie Watson. She represents the “wise person” I choose to believe we have in all of us. Sophie takes on the promises that each woman, openly or silently make to one another. In many ways she is the promise of constancy throughout the unanticipated and the stunning events that life offers up.
I look over at the picture of my grandmother there on my writing desk and I feel grateful for a creative spirit who is alive and well in me, fostered in time, in some way by her.
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The Shelter of Each Other is soon to be released!
When thirty-year-old teacher Meg Blackwell embarks on a renovation project at the old family farmhouse, she discovers letters and photographs that begin to unravel the fabric of her identity.
As she investigates a tragedy that originated in one man’s twisted desire for recognition, Meg realizes that she isn’t who she thought she was – and that she’s inextricably linked to three generations of women whose creative gifts carry them through the darkest moments of their lives.
The Shelter Of Each Other is the story of how these three women come to revise and reshape themselves, and of the creative spirit itself, which contains the power to nourish and sustain, and sometimes, to break us.
The novel takes us from Ontario, Canada to Scotland to France and back again.